Restart the Finder in Mac OS X

Need to quickly restart the Finder in Mac OS X? The quickest way to do so is using the Dock:

• Hold down Option key and Right Click on Finder’s Dock icon, then select “Relaunch”

Option+Right Click reveals the otherwise hidden “Relaunch” option in the menu, selecting that causes the Finder to quit and restart, and the entire desktop will be refreshed in the process.

Restarting Finder can be a helpful troubleshooting tip for some strange behaviors that may occur on the Mac desktop, and it’s much faster and less obtrusive than a full system reboot.

Outside of troubleshooting purposes, many customizations and defaults write commands require restarting the Finder for the changes to take effect. Although since you’re usually in the Terminal when using those, the Finder can also be restarted directly from the command line with the following:

killall Finder

Because the Finder is a process just like any other application on the Mac, you can also quit the Finder and treat it like any other application, having it stay closed completely. Leaving the Finder closed will hide the desktop, icons, and file system browser though.